Vladimir Putin has a Warrant for His Arrest. Does it Matter?

Robert sits down with Nick Waters, a war crimes analyst, researcher and charming fellow, to talk about the International Criminal Court and Vladdy Puts.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Welcome back to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about
world stuff fallen apart, putting it back together, all that
good stuff. Today we're actually covering something that's at the
intersection of all of that, both how fucked up things
are and the attempt to make them more just, more equitable,

(00:26):
less nightmarish. We're talking about war crimes, the International Criminal Court,
and most specifically the warrant that was just issued for
Vladimir Putin's arrest, which is something you've probably heard about
on the internet. People have various takes on this in
order to kind of talk about what's actually been done,

(00:48):
what it actually means, and sort of the history of
attempts to hold the leaders of nations to account for
war crimes. I want to talk to Nick Waters. Nick,
Welcome to the show. Higher Nick, you and I have
some connections outside of this. First off, you're you're here
on the show today because you work in an investigatory

(01:09):
investigative capacity. Geez, can you tell that I'm not used
to waking up this early for Belling Cat where we
both work together. Your focus has been primarily on war crimes.
You've been covering Ukraine lately, but you have a pretty
wide purview and a pretty wide base of experience, including
crimes in Libya. Um and yeah, I wanted to talk

(01:33):
to you a little bit. First off, welcome to the show.
Thanks very much, mate, Um of behind the Bastards. I
have the largest knife I could find in this place
next to me. It's not quite machete, but yeah, I
mean I thought I should have one just in case.
That's that's good, I've got um. Well, yeah, I actually

(01:53):
am more or less knifeless here. I do have a
nine millimeter in the desk, but somewhat more limited span
of uses. Now, Nick, you and I. You and I
have shared one of the strongest bonds that two men
can share, which is eating some really delicious a rep us.
But we also share an interest in the somewhat difficult

(02:21):
history of attempts from our species to kind of grapple
with the nature of war, crimes, of acts of genocide
and hold people to account for them. I kind of
think before we get into what's happened with Putin, we
should talk about what the ICC is and what its
history comes from. Because this it actually dates back a
little over one hundred years, attempts to make the ICC.

(02:42):
I think nineteen nineteen was the first convention in which
a number of European nations were like, boy, we should
really have some sort of court put together to attempt
to hold leaders and individuals to account for committing war crimes. Yeah.
I'm not a familiar with the kind of the very
long history of attempts at international justice. Suffice to say

(03:05):
that so far hasn't worked out quite how I think
everyone expects it to. That, That is the TLDR, the
international Justice good idea hasn't happened yet pretty much. Yeah,
I mean there's been lots of yeah, lots of agreements obviously,
kind of everyone knows Geneva Convention, et cetera, lots of

(03:26):
other agreements about how not to kill people in the
most horrific way as possible in war, and you know,
as part of that, like Roman Statue which created the ICC. Yeah,
it was agreed in nineteen ninety eight. So yeah, there's
been kind of like one hundred years or sort of
efforts before the ICEC actually got here. Yeah. Actually probably Also,

(03:48):
I need to say, like before we kind of get
going anything, I'm not a lawyer, which is super important
because I know all the lawyers out there will be
like angry about it. So nick I wanted to talk
about what in particular this decision means because there's bit like, obviously,
I think it's fair to say in the immediate term,

(04:10):
probably nothing like it's not like the international um uh
warrant agents are going to come out and arrest Vladimir
in the Kremlin or in his his mansion that you
see fake photoshopped images of on on Twitter all the time. Um.
But yeah, yeah, yeah, so in kind of like day

(04:32):
to day stuff, Yeah, it doesn't have that much an effect. Um.
So Russia doesn't recognize the jurisdiction of the ICC. So
it's not like, you know, the FSB are going to
storm into the Kremlin and ar Resciputin and like export
him to the Hague in a you know, different matter
bag or something that's that's not going to happen. Um.

(04:53):
But in other ways it's it's a big deal in
other ways. Um. And also it's for me, like the
biggest thing about this is that it's an indicator about
how seriously the ICC is taking taking this war. International
justice moves so slowly, you know, we're talking like you know,

(05:13):
mentioned in decades so to having a restaurants house. Yeah,
in one year is like a really big deal for
the ICEC at least. Yeah. And this is because, if
I'm not mistaken, the both Putin and the woman, because
he's not the only one, by the way, that's been
been charged by the the ICCUM. There's also I'm gonna

(05:36):
attempt to get her name right, Maria Lvova Belova, who
is the Commissioner for Children's Rights in Russia. And part
of the reason why this has happened so rapidly is
that both Putin and Maria have made pretty unequivocal statements
about the removal of Ukrainian children from their families, forced

(05:59):
deportation and into Russia and adoption by Russian families, which
is that is a war crime, that is an act
of genocide. Yeah, so I think the actual crime is
unlawful deportation or the actual citation is on awful deportation
of Ukrainian children, which yes, could be arguably and again
at this point emphasized not a lawyer, Yeah, I think

(06:21):
can feed into the kind of accusations of genocide. And
so it's a pretty big charge to level against Putin
and this commissioner this early on. I think it's also
like one of the easier ones as well, Like in
the view of the Russian States, this is a you know,
wonderful thing they're doing. They are essentially kind of rescuing

(06:43):
these children from and you can't see if I'm doing
air quotes right now, like Grainian Nazis educating them and
bring them up as Russian children, and you know, they're
they're taking these children away from their culture, their families,
and their country to basically race who they all, which
act plays a quite big part in the actuation that

(07:05):
could be part of a active GENOCIDEA yeah, and it's
it's interesting to me Levova Belova has kind of described
this like her justification of this, and I think the
Russian states justification of this is both that, yeah, the
Ukrainians or Nazis, and also I've heard claims from her
that like, well, we're removing children from a dangerous war zone,
which you know that begs the question why is it

(07:27):
a dangerous war zone right now? Among other things. But
one of the things that's interesting to me is that
Levova Belova is not just part of the state apparatus
of carrying out this act, but has also thanked putin
publicly for making it possible for her to adopt a
child from dun Boss, which is one of the Russian
occupied parts of Ukraine. So yeah, it is It is

(07:49):
kind of interesting the stuff that had to fall into
place for this to be able to happen in such
an expeditious manner. Yeah, I think it helps that they've
or the Russian state views this act is something that
is beneficial, and so they want to say, hey, look
we're rescuing these children. And you can see kind of
similar You've seen similar vibes with like basically stealing Ukrainian

(08:15):
cultural heritage from museums and stuff like that. They or
the Russian state believes, you know, that they are doing
the right thing, like we are very proud that we
have taken these objects away and we are saving them
again from Ukrainian artsies. And so they make public announcements
about it. They say, yeah, we're doing the thing. It's awesome,

(08:37):
isn't it. Yeah, And so the result is quite a
lot of evidence that they're doing these pretty bad things.
And so yeah, there's there's quit lot of evidence there.
There are statements from his Commissioner for Children from Peutin.
It's pretty clear what's happening. So it's quite a I
think it's quite an interesting charge to bring. Yeah, and
we're just so people are aware of the scale. President Zelinski,

(09:01):
if Ukraine at least has says that his country has
recorded about sixteen thousand cases of forcible deportations of children.
That's not like a final number, just like the death
tallies and whatnot are not final numbers. But that's that
is the Ukrainian state's estimate of how many kids have
been taken away, which is a I mean, that's a
pretty staggering number. I mean, yeah, that's a huge number

(09:22):
of children. Yeah, yeah, I know, that's an absolutely huge
number of children. And then you have to account you
know that it's not just a children they're the victims.
It's also their families who are the victims. So are
we're talking about like a knock on effect with you know,
tens of thousands of people who've been affected by these arcs,
if not more than that, Yeah, I think probably. I
mean sixteen thousand children, that probably higher than the tens

(09:45):
of thousands in terms of family members and whatnot who
are impacted by this. In terms of what technically this
means for Putin. There's about there's I think one hundred
and twenty signature signatory nations to the Rome Statue it Um,
and within those countries, theoretically, if if Putin or if

(10:05):
Maria were to travel there, they would theoretically be arrested
if they were to set foot in one of those
signatory nations. Yes, so theoretic theoretically doing a lot of
walking there. Yeah, doing a lot of heavy lifting. Okay.
So yeah, in theory, if Putin traves to any of
these nations, he should be arrested. But some of the

(10:25):
nations don't recognize or believe that heads of states are
basically immune, and I imagine there will be several of
those signatories who will likely refuse to extradite Putin should
mister Putin visit them. And this has actually happened before,
so I think it was South Africa refused to extradite

(10:47):
a former head of states. I think it was a
leader of self suit done. But yeah, it wasn't it
wasn't it Olmarba Shar, Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
I believe it was Olmarba Shar. Yeah. So he mactually
travel our m and was not arrested and extradited as
theoretically should have been. However, um, it still gives mister

(11:11):
Putin and especially a security details some headaches because they're
still going to have to check with these states when
they go and visit you know, Hey, are you going
to like arrest him yea, which is not like a
cool usually have to ask. And then if they were
planning to arrest him, you know, they might not tell
them that they're planning to arrest them. So there's always

(11:32):
going to be well at the moment, there's still like
a cost applied to mister Putin t other of traveling
to these countries that would still you know, might still
like consider the IC jurisdiction over the heads of state
to be lacking. Um. Yeah, yeah, so there's still there's
still like some some cost applied. Though if I'm rembering correctly,

(12:01):
there have been three sitting heads of state that have
faced ICC charges in office. We talked about Omar Bashir,
m Momar Kaddafi, and now Putin is number three, which
is if we're if we're looking at the history of
the last you know, I mean just since the establishment
of the ICC, fewer than the number of world leaders

(12:21):
who have been involved allegedly in crimes against humanity, I
think fair to say, which brings us to the question of, like,
what does it mean to be a signatory to rome,
to the ICC, what does it mean to actually be
bound by any of these rules? Because both Russia and

(12:43):
the United States I was looking at a map earlier
that kind of lists out every country's relationship to the ICC,
and both Russia and the United States are in the
position of like having endorsed aspects of the ICC and
then not signed on right, yeah, yeah, yeah, Again, not
a liar, not that familiar with how the ICC works

(13:04):
in practice, But basically, if you sign up to the ICC,
you have to agree to enforce their judgments, you know,
including a restaurants, which again is something in the US,
and US and Russia haven't done. The idea that basically
the ICC markets itself as markets itself basically thinks of
itself as a court of last resort. So you know,

(13:26):
they're not going to be out there prosecuting individual sold
or fair unlikely to be prosecuting like individual soldiers who've
like say, executed like teen Prinson of War in a ditch.
That's something that is unlikely that the ICC is going
to prosecute. They are going for you know, high in commanders,
people who've carried out like extremely severe acts, and especially

(13:49):
in cases where like a state is not able to
carry out such prosecution. So for example, take the UK,
so UK has in theory conducted investigations into allegations of
war crimes in a Rock, conducted by its troops. That

(14:12):
was I had so the Iraq Historic Allegations Team. It
was pretty shambolic. It is extremely shambolic. It was a
really bad investigation. The not just for the victims who
basically no one really ever got justice from it, very
very few people ever got justice from it, but also
the people who are actually accused were sometimes like investigated

(14:34):
multiple multiple times. But because the UK made some kind
of effort to investigate it, even if it was absolute shambolic,
it's unlikely that the ICC has ever actually going to
investigate UK soldiers for war crimes in the Rock, because
in theory that should be the UK carrying out their investigation,
and in theory they have carried out their investigation. It's

(14:54):
completely inadequate. But yeah, that's that's the justification. That's in
incredibly interesting to me because it does seem like On
one hand, I could see the logic, and this is
part of why, like the US, the United States, my
country's justification for why we are not a signatory is
that the Constitution does not allow us to agree to

(15:17):
have our citizens tried for crimes that they are being
tried for in the United States by an international court.
Something along those lines. And I can understand the idea that, like, well,
national sovereignty, like, the only way we're going to get
anyone to agree to let this thing exist in abide

(15:37):
by any aspect of its rulings is if it does
not overly interview with their national sovereignty and to including
their ability to prosecute their own soldiers for war crimes.
On the other hand, the state of affairs, as you've
just related, the state of affairs is inadequate, right, Like
that is, the system that has been developed is not
adequate to trying or achieving justice in a case like

(16:01):
the Iraq War in which there were a lot of
crimes committed that people have not been punished for. And
I I mean, obviously you have to kind of marry
that to the fact that the attempt to do something
at all in this way is extremely new, as we've said,
like there are we have, like most of the people
who work on my show are older than the ICC,

(16:24):
and so that's that's still an achievement. I don't know,
I'm wondering kind of like what you see is like
the positive future for attempts to hold individuals and nations
to account here, Like is that is it continuing to
grind like this or do you see kind of a
more positive opening coming forward as a result of particularly
the attention that all of these these war crimes in

(16:45):
Ukraine have gotten. I mean, I think it will continue
to grind. When you look at the history of a
trusties have taken place in conflict over the last you know,
like twenty years, it's just absolutely huge. Yeah, you know,
there's like a trusty upon a trustity upon a trusty,
and the ICC can only investigate a tiny number of those.
The reality is that only a tiny fraction of those

(17:08):
atrocitees will ever actually be investigated in victims faced justice.
That is the reality of the situation. The ICC does,
you know, carry out investigations and does CARRYCT prosecutions, but
again we're talking like the most grave crimes possible, and
usually you know, really senior people who often are able
to evade those kind of prosecutions. I think there's a

(17:31):
better chance of some kind of justice at like a
national level with universal jurisdiction. So recently, universe or jurisdiction
was used in Germany to prosecute two Syrian officers who
have basically carried out torture against Syrians during during the revolution,

(17:52):
and those those two Syrian officers have basically fled to
fled to Germany and related prosecuted that. And so it's
not just the ICEC. It's all so universe jurisdiction is
you know, trumbunals. There's other stuff there. But again, like
this is only a tiny fraction of everything that gets investigated.
And I've been reading of going through several different books
about Joseph Mengela most recently and including some accounts from

(18:18):
you know, Jewish doctors who are enslaved and who are
forced to work at Auschwitz. And I've been thinking a
lot about the the Nate, like the different kinds of
war crimes. Right, you have a group of Australian or
US or British soldiers in Afghanistan or Iraq who commit
a massacre, kill a number of civilians, and that is

(18:39):
a war crime. But there's also the kinds of war
crime that is a war crime that is the result
of individuals taking individual actions right as opposed to the
actions of a state, and the actions that are a
result of years worth of directed culture efforts, which I

(19:00):
think is part a way to look at what the
Russian state's attitude towards Ukrainians are and a lot of
the crimes that have been committed over there, the denial
of the existence of Ukrainians as a people is deeper
and more complex than the kind of crime that a
soldier might commit in a moment of passion, and fundamentally
different from that. And it's one of those things. If

(19:21):
you like, for example, to go back to Mangola, if
you're trying to judge Mangola for his crimes, you have
to judge the entire German medical establishment, which joined the
Nazi Party in higher numbers than any other group in
the country, and which was directly implicated in how Auschwitz
functioned and why it worked the way it did. And
there's realistically, like most of the doctors Mangola, there were

(19:42):
attempts to punish him. Obviously he escaped, but the doctors
who educated him, who taught him, who inculcated him in
the attitudes that were directly responsible for the crimes that
he committed, were never punished, And legally, I don't know
how you would punish people for that. How do you
hundh someone for promuligating ideas like the ideas that Ukrainians

(20:04):
are not a people, which leads to a lot of
the violence that you're seeing over there, Like, how do
you like there's not realistically, in at least in my
understanding of the law, a way to punish that. But
it is a factor in these crimes. Yeah, the creation
of a culture absolutely is and a key Like a
really good example of this is the radio station Rwanda, Yes,

(20:25):
who you know broadcast basically will effectively called to genocide.
And I think they were actually ended up being prosecuted
by the ICC, I think actually as well. I believe, Yeah,
I believe there were at least attempts. Yeah, the International
Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Yeah, I mean it's one thing
when you're talking about like direct incitements to violence. It's

(20:46):
another one you're talking about like kind of the stuff
that Dugan is responsible for, which is absolutely a factor
the kind of id the ideas that he was one
of the people who has kind of promuligated under the
direction of Putin and others in the Russian state are
like a factor in the behavior that we've seen over there.
But it also is harder to kind of qualify it

(21:08):
as a direct call for war crimes in some cases,
although some of the stuff Dugan has said, I think
you could you could argue is certainly like a direct
call to violence. Yeah, I mean, like yeah, where it's
really difficult to kind of get that to raise up
to the threshold of prosecution. It's really difficult thing to do,
especially if you are external to the culture that is

(21:30):
or to the organization that is creating that internal culture.
And I'm like very familiar with this kind of stuff,
having for those of you if you listened from one
will be familiar. I was an army officer, so like
quite a big part of my job was making sure
that like the culture within my cartoon was a beneficial,

(21:51):
good culture in which the blokes would knock go off
and like murder people. And you read about stories like
my Lie or there's a really good example for this
book called Black Hearts. This American pluting in Iraq, and
it's really clear where basically institutional culture has completely failed

(22:12):
or has created a culture in which basically committing atrocities
or murder is either you know, mildly ignored or actively encouraged.
And yeah, that that culture is something that is really
difficult to police because it really has to come from
within the institution itself, you know, unless you just completely
destroy the institution itself, which is also another option, which

(22:35):
is what the Canadians did were the Airborne Regiment after
some of their guys in Somalia like roasted some poor
guy alive on a fire. Jesus, the Canadians basically just
disbanded the entire Airborn regiment. They basically said, like, the
culture in this regiment is not it's too far gone. Basically,
we're going to disband this entire regiment, which is what

(22:56):
they did. So you can do that too, but it's
quite a difficult thing to do, kind of The last
thing I wanted to go over is the most recent
the response of the Russian state to these warrants. One

(23:19):
of them has been they've announced that they are in
carrying out an investigation into the ICC, which is it,
you know, Um, I'm sure as meaningful as the sentence
I just said. And I the other thing that they've
done is sort of threatened to launch a hypersonic warhead

(23:41):
at the Hague, which I mean, like, it's not he
does have a lot of missiles, so it's you can't
like completely disregard a threat from a nuclear armed nation
to launch missiles at the Hague. But um, it's also
just you know, threats like the are not completely and

(24:02):
in fact, there's a provision in um what is it called.
Let me let me double check on the name here.
I'm so bad at remembering the names of laws. Um,
the American service Members Protection Act that does theoretically allow
the use of military force by the US if American
citizens are extradited. Um, So like this is this is

(24:22):
like a much cruder version of that like if you
arrest us, will well will nuke they. But it does
like it's one of those things we're laughing about it.
But if you if you were to go back ten
years and imagine that threat being leveled, like even by Putin,
it would seem like farcical. Um, I guess it is farcical,

(24:43):
but we're here. Yeah, it's it's It's completely insane, isn't it. Yeah,
I mean, like how do you respond to that, Like right,
like I'm gonna I'm gonna hypeersonic. They the Hague response,

(25:04):
it's just like, yeah, it's mad. Like when if you
go to the Hague, like the ICC, you know, you'll
have like the security guards sat there with their little
kind of nine mill pistol and they kind of buzzy
through that kind of stuff, and like the idea of
them kind of you know, trying to fight off like
a delta force assault on the ICEC in the case
where like in a reckon soldier there's like, oh, it's farcical.

(25:26):
But then the idea that they could do anything, because
like a hypersonic missile is like thirty seconds away from
like obliterating the entire you gotta really, you gotta really
lead them. I mean, I mean, the only kind of
benefit I suppose is that like the ICEC is on

(25:48):
the outskirts of the Hague, so they would irradiate actually
quite a bit of a residential area and then a
lot of sand dunes. Yeah yeah, yeah. I mean one
of the app sides is that if Russia does nuke
the Hague, we will have deeper concerns than what to
do about international criminal law and the wake of that,
including taking sufficient iodine pills, which I'm not by I

(26:10):
mean people everyone gets is antsy about enough today. I
don't think this is like a realistic threat. I don't
think it's likely that the Russian State is going to
nuke the ICC. Unfortunately. Part of why it's unlikely is
that it's unlikely that Putin is going to face direct
justice for his actions unless he is somehow overthrown right,
like that is realistically the only case by which he

(26:31):
winds up in front of the ICC is if he
is forced out of power. Yeah. I mean like when
I when this you know, news first broke, there were
some people who are saying, hey, is this a big deal?
Little like will never you know people mc justice and like, yeah,
he might. He probably won't, but on the off chance,
it's always good to have that there. You know, I

(26:52):
went Slobodamnosovich, Uh, you know step down was president president
of Serbia. You know there was I think there was
a a which meant that he couldn't actually be extracted
to the ICC. So everyone said the same thing, you know,
he's never going to face justice, and then he ended
up at the ICCA. And if there is some kind

(27:12):
of cool or something, you know, not now, maybe in
the year's time, two years time, fifteen years time. You know,
Putin is a very valuable bargaining chip, and being able
to send him to the Hague would be an extremely
powerful message of hey, guys, we're entering a new era.

(27:33):
Like the Russian state doesn't want to be associated with
what happened under Putin's rule. He go have mister Putin
put him on trial, and you know, he becomes like
quite an important bargaining chip, and so yeah, the chance
of it happening is like pretty small, but it's still there.
It's still worth doing this. And that's I think where

(27:54):
I land is. I've just been again reading about. In
this winter of nineteen forty four was a rebellion in
Auschwitz by a number of members of the Sonder Commando,
which was a group of prisoners who were tasked with
the actual like job of making the camp function. And
these guys rebelled, They blew up a bunch of stuff,
and the whole attempt, this whole like attack that cost

(28:16):
hundreds of them their lives, was in the hope that
one of them would get out and tell the story
of what had been happening inside. And when you think
about it that way, what historically, and not just going
back to the Holocaust, but the entire long history of
war like human war crimes which go back as far
as war. The desire of victims to have someone be

(28:38):
aware of what has happened to them, I think makes
this a positive move in the middle of an incredibly
dark chapter in human history and an incredibly awful war.
The fact that this is happening at all, as flawed,
as imperfect as the whole and it's you know, people
keep bringing up things like the inequities of of the

(29:01):
prosecution of like the United States and Israel for a
number of different acts of their states and militaries. But like,
even given all that, the fact that this is happening
at all is I think meaningful. I do think it matters.
It's definitely a meaningful like it's very much like a
statement of intent from the ICC, and especially from the

(29:22):
new prosecutor, the ICC cream con who came in last year,
and he's kind of like, as far as I can tell,
come in and shaking a few cages and it's a
very clear statement of intent from both himself and from
the court as well. Yeah, well, I think that's as
good a note as any to end on, Nick, Do
you want to direct anybody towards um place they can

(29:43):
can donate or something they can or a place they
can go to read up more on this series other
issues of international criminal justice. I mean, yeah, I'd direct
people to to Bellencato coom, which is who I work
for my twitters and non school Waters eighty nine. I
don't really go onto it that much anymore. Something happened there,

(30:05):
I don't know. You may, yeah, but I past occasion
every so often, But yeah, felling out the com would
be you wor'd recommend that's where like our work is anyway. Yeah, well,
Nick Waters, thank you so much for coming on, for
lending your expertise here. That's going to do it for

(30:25):
us here. It could happen here. Sorry for using the
word here so many times. Have a lovely day, everybody.
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(30:48):
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